MY TECH.

Wi-Fi opens Web possibilities--and the outdoors

He attributes it, gratefully, to the proliferation of wireless networks near his home in Austin, Texas.

"I've got a hacker's pallor," the science fiction writer quipped. "But I have a tan this year, and I'm going to for the rest of my life. I'm going to surf [the Internet] in the sun. In the hammock."

Sterling, author of 11 books and winner of the Hugo Award for science fiction achievement, describes his work as covering the "impact of technology on society."

And he's convinced that of all developing technologies, the one that's responsible for his tan--Wi-Fi--will have the greatest impact.

"I was at a public park yesterday," he said. "My daughter was playing on the jungle gym and I was responding to e-mail. It is wireless broadband as an urban amenity. It will be free, and supplied by the city."

Another quietly emerging technology, called radio frequency identification, might have an unintended impact.

RFID chips are essentially monitoring devices, currently used by some retailers, to track items as they're being manufactured--and, eventually, to track products after they are purchased.

"It's Orwellian and it's `Big Brother,' and there are some powerful abuse aspects for this technology," said Sterling. "But it would ubiquitous application. Imagine never having to put anything away again."

If RFID technology were readily available today, "you just Superglue them to everything you own. And you could just Google your house."

For example, you could search for your boots and get their exact location. It's like an always-on GPS system for everything.

And it would work over the Internet?

"If this really works, there wouldn't be a Net," he said. "The house would be the Internet."

But don't worry, Sterling believes RFID is "a 20-30 year deal" and will not hit any time soon.

In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the potential negative aspects of this technology, visit StopRFID.org.

And speaking of emerging technologies, there may be no more dramatic ones than those being developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Lab.

Sterling made a pit stop there last week while in town to promote his new release, "The Zenith Angle." ("People always ask where science fiction writers get their ideas; you get them from hanging out," he said.)

Sterling was blown away by what he saw.

"They had this three-dimensional virtual reality human skull, right?"

It was projected under a square, glass station.

"Then they had this electronic stylus [pointer] device, right?"

And not only could Sterling rotate and maneuver the virtual 3-D skull in any direction, he could feel it with the stylus.

"When you tap at the air with this pencil-stylus, you can actually feel this virtual object," he said. "The computer knows where the 3-D surfaces of the skull are. So you probe the air, there's no object, but boy does it feel like it. It doesn't occur to you that you're hitting empty air.

"It was one of the most counterintuitive experiences I've ever had."

Which, for this writer of technothrillers, is saying a lot.

- - -

Unwired for action

To read more of Bruce Sterling's machinations, visit his Web log at http://blog.wired.com/sterling.

He's also a big fan of what he calls "social software" Web sites, and frequently contributes to high-tech, community blog sites like BoingBoing (www.boingboing.net), WorldChanging (www.worldchanging.com) and MetaFilter (www.metafilter.com).

Another favorite is Daypop (www.daypop.com), a news and Web log search engine.